Pages

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Colorful Carnations

I decided today to share the post that I just put up on my homeschooling blog. I think my readers here will enjoy it as well...

We're studying plants this week so I decided to have Bug do a science project. In learning about plants he has been studying how the roots of a plant act like arms by grabbing the minerals and water from the soil and then delivering it to the stem. The stem then acts like a straw, sucking up those minerals and the water, and delivering it to the leaves of the plant (where food is made) and eventually to the petals of the flower.

For his science project I wanted him to see first hand how the water travels up the stem. He did this by changing the color of carnations - exciting!

I was surprised by how many people out there have never seen this done so I took plenty of pictures to show you the process...

We started with plain white carnations. We cut the stems on a diagonal then put them in about an inch to two inches of water that was combined with a generous amount of food coloring (you need to add at least a teaspoon of coloring to the water). We used red, yellow, blue, and green.

After about an hour you could see the color starting to tint the flowers...

About two hours later the color was really showing through...

And by the time we woke up this morning the color had just exploded!

We put the flowers all together in a vase and it is a rainbow of beauty!

Bug said it was "like magic" and Bean just said a lot of "wow" and "that's amazing!"

What was really cool is that the Hubby had never seen this either so it was a science experiment for him as well.

The concept of how a plant's stem moves the water and minerals up to the leaves has been made very clear to Bug and the miraculous design of God's creation - all things working together - has been reinforced. I'd say this science experiment was a complete success!